Mentors, murals and more: Lane County's Friends of the Children opens door to bright future

Up a flight of stairs in a beige building on Lincoln Street is the new headquarters and clubhouse for Lane County’s Friends of the Children chapter.

Brass animal portraits act as coat hangers and a colorful mural of a mountain range hugs the back wall. As folks chatted and explored the new facilities at the chapter’s open house event on Wednesday, children played energetically in the Ruckus Room.

The whole space is dedicated to helping kids be kids in the face of systemic and generational barriers.

What is Friends of the Children?

Friends of the Children is an organization working to break cycles of generational poverty and disadvantage. This is done by assigning a salaried professional mentor, called a Friend, to provide support and mentorship for kids utilizing the program. These mentors work alongside their assigned youth for 12 years, typically from Kindergarten through high school, to help them develop skills in problem-solving, growth mindsets, self-management and more while acting as a consistent adult the child can lean on for support.

Children in the Friends program have experienced significant trauma in their childhoods and are identified by schools, community organizations and foster care systems to be placed in the program.

Friends of the Children was founded in 1993 by Dan Campbell. The program started with three Friends who served 24 children in Portland and now supports more than 650 schools and communities nationwide with 36 different locations.

The Lane County chapter of Friends was established in 2020, joining other Oregon chapters in Gresham, Portland, Bend, La Pine and the Klamath Basin. The local chapter serves residents of Eugene, Bethel-Danebo, Cottage Grove and now formally Springfield.

Outcomes from children involved in the Friends program lead to 92% of youth in the program enrolling in secondary education, military service or entering the workforce; 83% of youth graduate high school with a diploma or receive a GED; 93% of youth avoid involvement in the juvenile justice system; and 98% of youth wait until after their teen years to parent.

A new clubhouse

The Lane County chapter relocated to the new clubhouse this summer to better accommodate the growing need for their program’s services while staying in the neighborhood and expanding their physical space. By the end of 2023, the chapter will be supporting 64 youth, 128 caregivers and approximately 320 siblings and other individuals in participating youth’s homes. A new partnership between the Friends of the Children Lane County chapter and Springfield Public Schools allows for the program to better serve individuals in Springfield.

Executive Director Matt Springer said the Lane County chapter differs from other Friends chapters by also working to provide support for the parents and caregivers of participating youth. He said this approach wasn’t part of the organization’s original programming but that research reinforcing the positive outcomes of youth who have access to a stable, supportive adult figure throughout their childhoods pushed the chapter to provide parental and familial support.

By including parents and helping to change the environments around youths, Friends can work long term to have a bigger impact and help try to end multi-generational cycles of disadvantage, Springer said.

“We probably are fairly progressive in the network in terms of how much we prioritize that element of our work and really look at it as a dual mission where we’re serving kids through our professional mentoring and on the caregiver side, we’re really helping provide support and wrap-around to parents," Springer said.

Elliott Van Zandt, lead mentor, spent years working in mental health care before becoming a professional mentor for Friends of the Children. For him, working with youth in the Friends program is important because it offers an opportunity to provide support and guidance for kids who otherwise may not ever benefit from the regular connection with a trusted and reliable adult in their lives.

“I’m not just some counselor or some other person who just showed up in your life because of crisis. I have been here before crisis, I will be here after crisis. So that relationship really just serves the kids,” Van Zandt said.

“Coming from mental health, one of the challenges was adjusting my focus because kids don’t want to process all of the time. Part of being trauma-informed is knowing that part of the important thing of dealing with trauma is letting them be a kid.”

He said the mentorship he provides is dynamic and changes daily depending on what his program kids need at the moment. Being with these kids for 14-16 hours each week means that Van Zandt sees good and bad days as the kids experience them. Supporting these youth can look like helping them connect with activities that spark their joy, curiosity and interest, like climbing, yoga, drawing and skateboarding.

At the Lane County chapter, support also includes connecting youth's families with necessary resources through community partners who provide housing and stability support. Springer said 55% of the families served by the Friends Lane Chapter are near-immediately housing insecure, struggling month to month to stay housed.

“As soon as I think my families are doing great, something comes up. We’re like, ‘We’ve been chilling for a couple of weeks,’ and then all of a sudden, it’s like, ‘Oh, you guys got an eviction notice? Okay, let’s rally the troops. Let’s reorient,’” Van Zandt said.

“At some level, that’s just what it is to be impoverished in this country. It’s just a never-ending flood of stress and stressors. It’s kind of nice to be on the end where I get to just support you through this.”

The new clubhouse space allows a central location for program participants across Lane County to utilize as a play space, a homework lounge, a snack station and more as youth navigate their barrier-laden childhoods with reliable and regular support through Friends of the Children.

“Ultimately, all we do is just hang out with the kids and just figure out what that means and how to be the best version of that we can,” Van Zandt said.

“That’s why the 12-year model works. I can’t show up one week and think I’m going to fix anything so let’s just keep hanging and we’ll keep on figuring it out.”

Hannarose McGuinness is The Register-Guard’s growth and development reporter. Contact her at 541-844-9859 or hmcguinness@registerguard.com

This article originally appeared on Register-Guard: Lane County's Friends of the Children helps kids facing barriers